About Dr. Payet

Dentist & Photographer

Hi, my name is Charles Payet, and I’m a full-time, solo practicioner in the city of Charlotte, NC. Dental Photography has been a passion since I was introduced to it early in my career by colleagues such as Dr. Ross Nash, Dr. Tony Soileau, Dr. Mike Barr, and some others. With the advent of DSLRs in late 2003, high-quality digital photography became an affordable reality for most dentists, and I dove in headfirst. Photography itself came easily to me, as I’d been shooting with a Canon EOS 650 since college days in the early 1990’s. The freedom of digital, though, allowed me to get more into the creative side of photography, as it was so easy to delete whatever we don’t like without spending all the money on slide film and developing.

But even with digital, I have found the greatest challenge in implementing it into my practice to be workflow, i.e. getting the pictures from the camera to the computer in an easily findable and usable way, whether for case presentation or marketing. That’s why I started Dental Digital Photography: to help dentists figure out how to USE their photos after taking them.

Along the way, my passion for photography grew to the point that I decided to turn professional, and while it’s not something I’ve had the time to really develop over the last couple years, it has been gratifying to see that slowly move forward. As my practice continues to mature, I hope to have more time to develop that aspect of my photographic passion. For more examples of my work, including dental, landscapes, and portraits, please visit my website CDPayetPhotography.com.

I’ve been shooting Canon bodies and lenses (see My Gear) for the last 20-something years, and my bias here is clear – when talking camera gear, I’ll mostly be discussing Canon, because I am not familiar with Nikon, Sigma, Sony, or others. That’s not to say that they’re not good – they’re very good!

Computer-wise, I use all PC’s running Windows 7 Pro (64-bit), as it’s very stable and works well. Honestly, I’d love to switch to all Mac computing, but haven’t felt like it’s worth the cost right now. With Windows 8 coming up, though, that may change.

As you’ll see in reading the blog, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is my primary workhorse, but I do also use Adobe Photoshop CS6 for some detail work, as well as working on my non-dental photos.

For non-dental photography, I use a range of software for various effects, including the following: